FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

1849-1924English

"I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young. They’re still princesses"

Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett
(1849 –1924) was a prolific writer but her enduring fame rests mainly with three very popular works of
fiction: Little
Lord Fauntleroy (published in 1885–1886), A
Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911). These
novels were originally regarded as being aimed at a juvenile readership but on
publication they also garnered an appreciative adult following.

There is a common theme running through each of these
titles: a young person is isolated and presented with trials and tribulations
which they tackle with great courage and ingenuity to reach their happy ending.

Fauntleroymade a huge impact on publication. The
central character is a small, angelic boy from New York who learns that he is the
heir to an English earldom and is whisked away to the English countryside where
he begins a campaign to win over his bad-tempered old grandfather.

A Little Princess is a Cinderella-type tale of Sara
Crewe, an exceptionally intelligent and imaginative student at Miss Minchin's
Select Seminary for Young Ladies, who is devastated when her adored, indulgent
father dies. Now penniless and banished to a room in the attic, Sara is
demeaned, abused, and forced to work as a servant. How this resourceful girl
sets about reversing her fortunes is the great appeal of this book.

The Secret Garden concerns Mary Lennox, a sickly, selfish and
spoilt ten year old who is sent to stay with her hunchback uncle in Yorkshire.
She remains troublesome and discontented with her lot until she finds the way
into a secret garden and begins to tend it. This brings a remarkable change to
her life and character.

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in Cheetham, Manchester. After her father
died in 1852, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 the
family emigrated to America, settling in Tennessee. It was here that Burnett
began her writing career. In 1868 she managed to place a story with Godey’s Lady’s Book and within a few years she was being
published regularly in Godey’s, Peterson’s Ladies’ Magazine, Scribner’s
Monthly, and Harper’s. In 1872 Frances married Swan Burnett, a
doctor. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their two sons were
born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett
then began to write novels, the first being, That Lass o' Lowrie’s, (1877)
which received good reviews. This book combined a remarkable gift for realistic detail
in portraying scenes of working-class life—unusual in that day—with a plot
consisting of the mostromantic and improbable of turns. Little Lord
Fauntleroy appeared in 1886 to great acclaim, although her romantic
adult novels written in the 1890s were also very popular. It was during this
time that she wrote and helped produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A
Little Princess.

Burnett enjoyed socialising and lived a lavish lifestyle.
Beginning in the 1880s, she began to travel to England frequently and in the
1890s bought a home there. This was Maytham Hall in Kent where
Burnett kept extensive gardens, including an impressive rose garden. She wrote The Secret Garden while at the Maytham and
it is often cited as the inspiration for the setting of the novel.

Her oldest son, Lionel, died of tuberculosis in 1890,
which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her
life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898 and married Stephen Townsend, a man ten
years her junior, in 1900. Burnett’s biographer Gretchen Gerzina said of
the marriage, ‘it was the biggest mistake of her life.’ They were divorced two
years later.

Once again Burnett turned to writing to increase her
income and in 1905 she reworked her play A Little Princess into a
novel. In 1907, she returned permanently to the United States, having become a
citizen in 1905, and she built a home on Long Island outside New York City. Her
son Vivian was employed in the publishing business and at his request she
agreed to be editor for Children’s Magazine. Over the next few years she
wrote a number of short stories for this periodical. In 1911 The Secret
Garden was published. In the years following Burnett continued to write
novels, the last one being published in 1922. She died on Long Island in 1924
and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery. In 1936 a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter
Vonnoh was erected in her honour in Central Park’s
Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden
characters, Mary and Dickon.